Xenon is an inert gas with a large electronic environment that makes it sensitive to any interaction, even physical. In the case of Xe-129 isotope (spin 1/2), the resulting electronic perturbation is directly transmitted to the nucleus and, therefore, affects the nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shift. In this review, we report exhaustively up to 1996 the many applications of this technique in both fundamental and applied research in the fields of microporous and mesoporous solids.